At first blush, the proposal by the IPPR think tank that atheism should be taught alongside other religions in schools seems unexceptional. As the Church of England and Muslim Council of Britain have remarked, children are already taught that some people don't believe in God. But this agenda is actually altogether different. This is more than a proposal to state the obvious -- after all, once you've told children that some people don't believe in God, what's there to teach about atheism? How do you teach a non-doctrine whose only claim to fame is as a negation?

No, the real agenda is not to expand children's horizons but to narrow them by attacking both the faith they already have and the family authority that has given it to them. It is specifically to undermine Christianity, revealed religions and the meaning of religion itself by giving equal weight to agnosticism, humanism, environmentalism and paganism. Anti-religion, in other words, is to be equated with religion. It also explicitly aims to subvert moral norms. Thus, instead of being taught the Ten Commandments, it says children should be taught to question the authenticity of the Bible:

'They should also be told from an early age of the alternatives to marriage and that there are non-religious ways of marking momentous experiences... Children with strong religious beliefs would be encouraged to question them and to ask what grounds there are for holding them. "Pupils would be actively encouraged to question the religious beliefs they bring with them into the classroom, not so they are better able to defend or rationalise them, but so they are genuinely free to adopt whatever position on religious matters they judge to be best supported by the evidence." '

As the Telegraph leader comments, this is nothing other than yet another attempt at ideological indoctrination:

'It reflects the belief that parents who pass on the Christian faith are guilty of indoctrinating their children, and that it is the role of the state to stop them. The IPPR and its allies in the Government are not so much interested in promoting diversity as in replacing one set of orthodoxies by another: the joyless ideology of cultural relativism.'

Still, no doubt Edinburgh university would approve. It is to ban Christian prayers at graduation ceremonies to avoid offending other religions and atheists:

'Officials agreed last week that, in future, a short "reflection" would make reference to general spiritual themes... A report by Michael Anderson, the university's senior vice-principal, suggested that continuing the tradition of prayers might also leave the university open to legal action under race or religious discrimination laws.'

Thus a national culture is redefined as intrinsically racist or discriminatory, the necessary prelude to its total deconstruction.